AI Adoption in CX Nears 70%, Yet Only 2% of Programs Reach the Center of Excellence Standard, Forethought Report Finds

Third annual study finds that action-taking AI, purpose-built systems, and continuous feedback loops are the clearest markers of sustained improvement and business impact.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Forethought AI Agents by Zendesk today released the State of AI in CX Report, its third annual study of over 600 CX leaders and practitioners. AI adoption in customer experience has risen from 54% in 2024 to nearly 70%, yet only 2% of AI-using organizations meet the report’s Center of Excellence standard, revealing the gap between deploying AI and operating it for sustained business impact.

New Index Finds Most AI Programs in CX Remain Experimental

Forethought’s 100-point AI for CX Center of Excellence Index evaluates programs across five dimensions: measured outcomes, operating maturity, training sophistication, production trust and control, and ROI discipline. Applied to current AI users:

• 70% of organizations score in the lowest “Experimental” tier
• Only 2% reach the top “Center of Excellence” tier

“Simply deploying AI is no longer the hard part. Every organization wants AI in CX now," said Antoine Nasr, Head of AI at Forethought AI Agents by Zendesk. “The truth is, the majority of implementations aren’t successful. What's missing is proper training for the admins managing their AI agents and setting up the right feedback and context loops.”

Action-Taking AI Marks the Biggest Performance Divide

The report defines four maturity stages: assistive, action-taking, agentic, and self-improving. The largest gap is between the first two; programs moving beyond Q&A to action report stronger results across resolution, satisfaction, and retention.

• 56% of organizations using AI report improving resolution rates, compared to 19% of those without AI
• 74% of programs with action-taking AI report improving resolution rates, compared to 43% of those at the assistive stage
• 53% of teams using action-taking or agentic AI report improved customer satisfaction scores, compared to 33% of those at the assistive stage

"Agentic AI took our CX program to new heights by allowing us to remain lean on hiring, without needing to hire a lot more headcount or completely replace the human aspect," said Jessie Roberts, Care Operations Lead at Clair.

Purpose-Built AI Leads to Resolution and Cost Improvement

Purpose-built AI programs report resolution-rate improvement 16 percentage points more often than DIY AI programs and are most likely to demonstrate measurable value within six months. DIY programs have ranked last on cost-per-resolution performance in all three annual studies.

Learning Systems Deliver Greater Business Value

Cost per resolution is one of the clearest indicators of AI’s business impact: organizations combining historical service data with ongoing feedback and QA loops are nearly twice as likely to report positive resolution trends and show the strongest AI-attributed cost gains—a pattern documented for three consecutive years.

The Channel Blind Spot: AI Isn’t Showing Up Everywhere Customers Are

AI adoption has not kept pace with omnichannel support. Email and chat lead, while voice shows the largest gap: 71% of organizations use it for support, but only 20% have live AI on the channel. The strongest-performing programs preserve context across channels rather than treating each as a silo.

These findings reinforce a central message from Zendesk’s 2026 CX Trends: customers now expect instant, context-aware resolution. State of AI in CX shows how CX organizations can deliver it: equip AI to take action, ground it in knowledge and historical service data, and use feedback and QA loops to improve outcomes over time.

Methodology

The State of AI in CX Report surveyed 606 CX leaders and practitioners across company sizes, industries, and geographies in early 2026. Findings are self-reported and should be read as directional rather than causal.

The full report is available at https://forethought.ai/state-of-ai-in-cx-report-third-edition.

About Forethought AI Agents by Zendesk

Founded in 2018, Forethought AI Agents by Zendesk delivers self-improving AI agents for customer service on any platform. Supporting billions of interactions for leading companies like Upwork, Grammarly, UPS, and WordPress, Forethought AI agents think, act, and improve over time, helping organizations deliver better customer experiences and realize more than $1 billion in ROI. G2 has officially recognized Forethought as a top-performing AI agent.